


silence is found in chaos

by Eleanor_jane (eleanor_jane)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Hurt Steve Rogers, Jewish Wanda Maximoff, PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Clint Barton, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Telepathic Wanda Maximoff, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 21:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11883489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_jane/pseuds/Eleanor_jane
Summary: "Silence can be found in noise, and Wanda Maximoff can feel it spreading out until she can almost feel it on her fingertips. There is silence in metallic whirrs and arrows hitting targets and the National Anthem forced out through a clenched jaw."





	silence is found in chaos

Everything is silent and deafening.

Wanda’s grandmother is singing somewhere, somehow, an endless repeat in her head. It is a voice of betrayal and hurt that spans centuries, of pain passed down through generations. It is the pain of losing parents to gas chambers and daughters to Hydra, of watching family recipes baked into her DNA turn to dust. It is the pain of her two grandchildren being long gone by the time she got there, and the pain of being confined to the hospital bed when they are finally set free.

She stroked their faces with her splinter fingers and spoke in a language they could barely understand anymore. When she died her existence was a secret belonging to her and Pietro, and her handlers at Hydra never saw a tear fall.

Everything is silent now because her family - that's what the team are: too messy to be blood and too connected to be anything else - know silence. Silence can be found in noise, and Wanda Maximoff can feel it spreading out until she can almost feel it on her fingertips. There is silence in metallic whirrs and arrows hitting targets and the National Anthem forced out through a clenched jaw.

Her head is all noise. It is screams and graves and syringes and fire medicine that burns her, and it is her grandmother singing her haunting song. It is the whisper of the chasm in her head Pietro once occupied, just close enough to call to her. To fall in, to surrender, to become a monster like she was programmed to be.

She does not fall. She does not waver. She simply accepts the cacophony, and tries to breathe.

Some days, Wanda wishes she could not hear them. That she could have only her own thoughts in her head: isolation and all the quiet beauty of it. But when she is finally alone her mind conjures up prison cells, shock collars, Pietro’s death rattle and she longs for noise again.

Natasha is sometimes there and sometimes not, clinging onto new names and new accents and new clothes. She is shifting underneath her skin, trying to find solace somewhere and always falling short. Wanda watches as whisky blurs every Natalia Romanova together into one - she watches Natalia dance and bleed and cry and shoot and dance again. She hears the echo of empty corridors, and watches Clint rescue her from the darkness of her mind.

Clint is shut off. He has always been shut off - his mind is his and his memories are his too. Not to be seen from afar, not even by her. She falls asleep on his shoulder and drinks coffees at midnight by his side, all to his familiar silence.

Steve is scared. His terror creeps beneath his skin and he tries not to show it. He has a smile of someone who has lost a part of himself, and she recognises that pain. But he got his Bucky back while she buried Pietro, and she sees that shame painted on his mind. He wants to fix everything in that way tall blonde Westerners did, but in his head he was a foot smaller with asthma picking fights in back alleys. Wanda feels a part of him shift and crack when he stops believing in the national anthem, and the surge of love every time Bucky walks into a room.

Sam is always there. He is warm and kind, ready with a joke and a smile so wide you could almost believe he isn't scared of her. He has her back and cooks with her every Thursday, and stages an intervention when he catches her listening to Taylor Swift. Riley is long dead but alive in Sam’s mind: plump and pale, with freckles everywhere. Some nights he falls in his dreams (a pain so large she can't see the edges), and some nights he does not.

Tony’s mind went so fast she couldn’t keep up. She saw glimpses of guilt and loneliness and pain rippling beneath the surface - and she wants to feel sympathy and stretch it out to heal his pain - but she looks at him and sees Pietro’s blood. She didn’t look at him often.

Bucky’s head is a black hole. She daren’t look unless it sucks her in, and she has barely escaped the darkness herself. Steve appears sometimes in Bucky’s head, drenched in blood. The images scare her, so she leans on Clint’s shoulder and takes in the silence of the walls he’s put in place to keep her out.

Rhodes stays away. So does Helen Cho. Vision is the quiet chatter of coding that she likes, occasionally punctuated with solid words like he's still learning how to think. She hears her name and she hears his love for her, and so she teaches him to cook until she's ready to say how she feels.

They were her family. Bloody and noisy and scarred and beaten and strong, with thoughts that conflicted and fought and bruised each other. She sat and she listened to their battles and tried to muster the strength to help them. Most of the time she sat still and nibbled on the sweets Pietro used to live on.

Wanda' grandmother is singing somewhere. Her mother and father form a tragic harmony, and Pietro's voice lasts when even those fade. But she will not bow to depression or despair. She has her grandmother's blood, after all.


End file.
